dalit

By Tommy Wilkes and Rupam Jain LUCKNOW, India, Oct 25 – When Amit Shah, president of Narendra Modi’s ruling party, meets with the Indian prime minister, he is sometimes asked a question he struggles to answer: “What is behenji thinking?” By “behenji”, or “older sister”, Modi means Mayawati, the enigmatic politician and former ruler of

By Rina Chandran MUMBAI, Oct 20 – A Dalit man has killed himself in western India in a fresh protest over land, as a campaign for land rights for the low-caste community widened across the country. Three Dalit men who had been protesting over a lack of land titles in Junagadh in Gujarat state, had

By Rina Chandran MUMBAI, Sept 22 – When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited his home town in Gujarat state to mark his birthday over the weekend, the national media focused on the detention there of a young Dalit rights activist. In just a few months since he led a protest after four Dalit youths

By Rina Chandran MUMBAI, Sept 19 – A former rebel fighter and member of India’s “untouchable” caste is taking on caste-based discrimination with packaged foods that would have been regarded as impure just decades ago. Chandra Bhan Prasad, 58, was born into the Dalit Pasi community of pig rearers in northern India, considered untouchable in

By David Brunnstrom WASHINGTON, March 4- India has denied visas for a delegation from the U.S. government agency charged with monitoring international religious freedom, the agency said on Thursday. The delegation from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom had been scheduled to leave for India on Friday for a long-planned visit with the support

India’s state apparatus is getting personal—and dissidents are bearing the brunt BY Meena Kandasamy The suicide of Dalit research scholar and student leader, Rohith Vemula, on January 17 marked a watershed moment in the anti-caste struggle in India. The factors that led to his suicide make it increasingly clear that what came to pass was an